Tag Archive for 'Trader Joes'

Product Review: Trader Joe’s Sipping Chocolate

(Quick side note: This product is only available at Trader Joe’s during the holidays, which is terrible! Our local Trader Joe’s is out of it and they say that they won’t have any until next year.) OK OK I know it’s not exactly what you call a “breakthrough gluten-free product.” I mean chocolate is one of those things that is naturally gluten-free like a steak or a baked potato. At the same time, it’s sipping chocolate (yeah!) and it’s also now Sienna’s 3 PM snack at work. We got tipped off to the Trader Joe’s Sipping Chocolate by a reader, Lynne. Thanks Lynne!

Here are the ingredients: Cocoa Powder, Cane Sugar, Chocolate Liquor, Cocoa Butter. A nice short list. Their allergen disclaimer for this product reads: “Made on equipment shared with milk and soy.” The can says a serving is 3 tablespoons, which is 90 calories, 30 mg of sodium, and also contains a whopping 23% of your recommended daily allowance of dietary fiber. Of the 28 grams that make up a serving, 15 grams of that is sugars.

Of course, if you want some hot chocolate, you’re probably not going to fret about the sugar much, are you? Then on the other side of the can are two recipes. One is for making hot chocolate, and the other is to make sipping chocolate. To make hot chocolate, you stir 3 tablespoons of mix into 3/4 cup of hot milk. To make the sipping chocolate, you stir 3 tablespoons of mix into 1/3 cup of hot milk.

Check out the chocolate left on our whisk. That’s thick! We tried the hot chocolate recipe first, and I wasn’t into it. For better or for worse, I like my hot chocolate with more sugar and milk, so the proportions were wrong for me. Sienna likes it that way, though. She doesn’t adjust it at all.

Here is the pour. It’s like we’re pouring molten steel to make hammers or something. (No we’re not. That’s sipping chocolate.)

Here is the finished chocolate drink. It almost tastes like someone melted down a chocolate bar. It’s very thick and really delicious. As the name would imply, it is for sipping, and I think most people are not going to want to drink very much of it in one go. I like it with a palate cleanser like some hot tea or a glass of milk. Little bit of chocolate. Little bit of tea.

One thing that they don’t mention on the tin, but most professional hot chocolate brewers will already know, is that you can’t just stir the mix into some hot milk. If you do it that way you end up with lumps. To make it without lumps, you first stir up the mix with a little bit of hot milk or hot water (maybe a tablespoon or so). Then you mix that up into a paste. Once it’s consistent, then you can add it to hot milk and it will all dissolve uniformly.

This post was originally intended as a companion piece for our review of the Trader Joe’s Gluten-Free Brownie Mix, which we love!

We want to know: It seems like sipping chocolate is kind of a new thing. Does anybody out there have a favorite place to get it? Is there anywhere in Portland Oregon to get sipping chocolate? Let us know in the comments.

Times we have visited: 3+ (so we feel confident about our score.)
Overall rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Price compared to “regular”: The same

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Published on December 22, 2009 in Product Review. 12 Comments Tags: , , .

Product Review: Trader Joe’s Gluten Free Brownie Mix

Chocolate! That’s what we’re talking about here. We’ve been making the Trader Joe’s Gluten-Free Brownie Mix for almost a year now and recently it came to my attention that we haven’t ever reviewed it on this site. This mix is really awesome. We don’t make it exactly how the package says you should, though, so I’m going to provide details about what we do.

Trader Joe's Gluten-Free Brownie Mix

The brownie mix is free of wheat, peanuts, tree nuts, dairy, soy, and corn, which is cool because that takes care of quite a few common allergy foods. Of course, it has chocolate, but that’s the point! Here is a list of ingredients: Organic Evaporated Cane Juice (sugar), Sweet Brown Rice Flour, Cocoa (processed with alkali), Tapioca Flour, Arrowroot Flour, Sea Salt, Xanthan Gum. I always list the amount of sodium in the Trader Joe’s products I review (check here to see a list of our reviewed Trader Joe’s Gluten Free products). The package says that it makes 12 servings. Each serving has 125 mg of salt.

Trader Joes Gluten-free Brownie Mix

The recipe on the package calls for 1 egg, 1/2 cup vegetable oil, and 1/4 cup water.

Enjoy Life Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips

We always put some of these awesome chips in our brownies. They’re the Enjoy Life Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips. Besides being delicious, they’re free of dairy, nuts, gluten, and soy, and are mini-chips. This makes them ideal for brownies.
As an egg substitute, you can add your own favorite (when we replace eggs, we use the Ener-G Food Egg Replacer because it is gluten-free.) We also replace half of the oil with some applesauce. This sounds kind of weird, considering you’re making brownies, but I think it really improves the brownies, and also the brownies are a lot more healthy. In case you’re wondering, it is possible to replace all the oil with applesauce and end up with edible brownies, but they definitely aren’t as delicious, and don’t seem to keep as well.

Ready to go!

One of the most important things about making brownies is to not overcook them. When you overcook brownies they end up rock hard when they’ve cooled off. It seems like the Trader Joe’s mix doesn’t suffer from this so much, which is cool. With a little bit of adjustment, this mix can also be used to make cookies. Instructions for these are on the package.

Finished Brownie

And here’s the reward. We have made these brownies and shared them with friends and family, and nobody has ever suspected that they are gluten-free. They’re awesome!

We want to know: Are there other gluten-free brownie mixes out there? Do you have any tricks or tips to make better brownies? Let us know in the comments.

Times we have visited: 8+ (so we feel confident about our score.)
Overall rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Price compared to “regular”: About the same

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Published on December 14, 2009 in Product Review. 6 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Product Review: Pamela’s Gluten-Free Baking & Pancake Mix

We’re getting close to our one year anniversary of Gluten Free Portland dot Org, and a lot of our long-term readers will know by now that I love pancakes and am on a one-man search for the best gluten-free pancakes in the world. Right now, my preferred gluten-free pancakes are the Trader Joe’s frozen kind, which we reviewed here. We also tried the Trader Joe’s mix, reviewed here, but I liked the pre-made ones better, mostly because the mix doesn’t have much flavor. Over the year we’ve received a lot of comments from people that we should try Pamela’s Gluten-Free Baking & Pancake Mix. So we finally did it.

Pamela's Gluten-free Baking & Pancake Mix

If you have trouble getting Pamela’s mixes at your local store, you can get them on Amazon. Here’s a list of the ingredients: Brown Rice Flour; White Rice Flour; Cultured Buttermilk; Natural Almond Meal; Tapioca Starch; Sweet Rice Flour; Potato Starch; Grainless & Aluminum-Free Baking Powder (Sodium Bicarbonate, Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate, Potato Starch); Baking Soda; Sea Salt; Xanthan Gum. Those of you who watch for allergens in ingredient lists will have caught the buttermilk and almond meal. Their cross-contamination statement states that this mix is manufactured on shared equipment that is also used with tree nuts, soy, eggs, and milk. Seeing as how we’re talking about the ingredients, their serving-size (two 4-inch pancakes) contains about 390 mg of sodium. That compares well to the frozen Trader Joe’s, which have 430 mg in a serving.

Mix it up

Making pancakes with this mix is ridiculously easy. Depending on the size of your skillet, it can be a good idea to pre-heat the skillet. You’ll want it hot enough that drops of water will sizzle, but not so hot that they jump. Put the Pamela’s gluten-free mix in a mixing bowl and add eggs, oil, and water. I also added a half teaspoon of vanilla. Obviously, you’ll want to add the water last, and do the thing where you add most of it in and then mix it up to make sure your mix doesn’t get too watery. Your mix should be wet enough that it pours, but thick enough that it’ll hold together when you pour it on the skillet.

gluten-free pancake!

It is in the very nature of pancakes that your first batch won’t be good. I always cook only one pancake first to make sure the temperature is right. If the skillet is too hot, the insides won’t cook. If it’s too cold, the outsides won’t brown properly and the pancakes will be dry.

Steaming Hot Pancakes

Gluten-free pancakes!

Gluten-Free Blueberry Pancakes!

I also made some blueberry pancakes. By now you’re probably like “Yes Yes Dave, but how did they taste?” I thought they were good. They cook up fluffy and moist. If someone were to cook them for me, I would eat them happily. Sienna didn’t like them much and said that they had a strange aftertaste. She said that they tasted like ashes. Maybe we were expecting them to be really amazing because of all the positive comments we’ve read. It’s pretty clear that this mix is rather popular with the gluten-free crowd. I would say that the Pamela’s mix is better than the Trader Joe’s gluten-free mix, but the finished pancakes aren’t as good as the Trader Joe’s frozen packaged pancakes.

Freeze them pancakes

Speaking of frozen pancakes, I like to make a large batch of pancakes and then freeze them to eat later. They reheat very well.

I think that, ultimately, if you miss pancakes and want to make some from a mix, I would recommend giving Pamela’s a try. From the disclosures on the package, it looks like there isn’t a chance of gluten cross-contamination, which is nice. The recipe is easy, and besides just pancakes, the package includes recipes and directions for making waffles, crepes, muffins, chocolate chip cookies, and also for breading chicken or fish. (For breading chicken and fish, we really love using garbanzo and fava bean flour with pepper and paprika – see our recipe here).

We’ve been having a lot of good luck using some of the various gluten-free flour mixes available on the Internet. Maybe it’s time for me to start looking for some.

We want to know: Do you have a favorite store-bought gluten-free baking mix? How about a flour mix or pancake recipe on the Internet? Send us a link. Let us know in the comments!

Times we have visited: 1 (So your mileage may vary.)
Overall rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Price compared to “regular”: about 45% more (based on prices of wheat-based mixes on Amazon)

Check out other Pamela’s Mixes on Amazon.

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Published on November 30, 2009 in Product Review. 2 Comments Tags: , , , .